


Wander

by minkmix



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Genre: I'm in there too., M/M, by Tsubaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:41:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Seiji and Ryo by Tsubsaki.Seiji and Ryo are complicated. <3So deliciously complicated.
Relationships: Date Seiji | Sage Date/Sanada Ryou | Ryo Sanada
Kudos: 4





	Wander

Wander  
by Tsubaki

The boy was vaguely pretty in a slightly bovine way. Large-jawed, thick-chested, narrow-waisted, the lips full and tolerably well-shaped, the eyes large and dumb.

The eyes were the thing that made him even remotely worthwhile — they wavered between verdant and sepia, moss and loam, pupils thinly ringed with black. Large and dumb and lovely.

Shut now, lashes dark on flushed cheeks, and the mouth hung slackly, emitting soft, mellow snores.

Seiji rose from the bed and surveyed the supine form, mildly disgusted.

The boy stirred slightly, sprawled naked under the thin sheet. A mediocre eroticist, he had orgasmed copiously and plummeted asleep. From beginning to end, front door to slumberland, the encounter had taken all of twenty minutes. He had never managed to get Seiji’s pants off. Seiji wondered if the idiot had even noticed.

He adjusted his shirt.

He did not bother committing the name to memory. The face would soon follow, fade away to the back of his recollection before disappearing completely. Seiji very rarely fucked the same stranger twice.

*

It hadn’t been planned. The old red jeep had overheated on the highway, near dusk, conked out with a rattle and a puff of acrid steam. It was time for that machine to be retired.

Seiji ducked out of the rain and into a small nomiya off the side of the highway, hoping to find a phone. Wind ruffled his hair, a final gust flapping under the tails of his dark blue coat as he pushed the door shut firmly behind him.

It was early yet. The convivial hum of voices still at medium strength, a piquant cloud of nicotine and burnt grease gradually thickening, making everything hazy, indistinct. Not fancy — tint-haired and tall-shoed younger people crowded themselves into weathered wooden booths while somber servers in black T-shirts and square white aprons placed brimming, frothy nomimono in front of them, beers, ciders, sakés; behind the counters, industrious workers fried meat and chopped fish and filled glasses with poker-faced precision; at the bar, salarymen with open collars and loosened ties tossed back their pints and laughed loudly at each other’s jokes, shedding their daytime politesse with their sobriety, thin amusement in their voices, wearied disillusionment in their eyes.

Seiji walked close to the wall, trying to avoid interaction, hoping to avoid notice. He was failing miserably at the latter.

Feh. It had never worked before, there was no reason it should start now. He ignored the scattered glances that followed him proprietarily through the room, like big game.

The phone was uncomfortably close to the restrooms. Fishing in his pockets for a ten-yen piece, he dialed.

Four rings... five... and no answer. Ryo must not be there yet.

Upon hearing his own voice begin on the answering machine, Seiji hung up. He turned to make his way to the door once more, gold head weaving through the sea of glossy black.

He gritted his teeth against the eyes.

The realization and approval, the calculation and the sizing up. He could feel their minds, intrusive pressure at the back of his own; could feel them gearing up, preparing, slipping on the false character like a shoddy overcoat, the approach-the-prey persona, the knowing smile and wink, syrupy and condescending. One look, and thinking they knew him, twisting, molding him to fit the mediocre measure of their imaginations.

There was little in life more demeaning than having been weighed in such a shallow balance, having found approval there.

So what’s your name?

I’m not staying.

They called it beauty, but that was a lie. It was more about otherness, peculiarity akin to disfigurement — it cut a person off into a category just as surely as deformity would. Strange, extraordinary, deviant from status quo — objectified, he became a thing, a piece to obtain, like a collectible.

Do you come here often?

No.

Easier to stomach if they would just come out with it. Why bother — would it be so difficult, a straightforward "I like your face and I want to have sex with you"? He’d respect that more than this awkward dance-about-and-shuffle.

Oh, but that was a thing that must never be stated aloud — always implied, hinted at, as social conventions demanded. Courtesy.

You look familiar. Have we met?

No.

He narrowed his eyes.

He knew precisely what they wanted to do with him. It was his nature, his dubious gift — he could see it in their minds like a movie, whether he wanted to or not.

Vulgar yes, but also... challenging.

Seiji felt a faint stirring in the pit of him, a private, anticipatory heat. Almost... pleasurable.

Determined, his mouth a grim line, contempt in the set of his jaw. Maybe he would stop a bit after all. Sit at the bar a second. Have a drink. Relax.

Ha.

Where are you from? Do you live around here?

May I buy you a drink?

And the calculatedly casual brush of knee against thigh. So predictable. So banal.

When you have become so familiar with a performance that you can recite the dialogue before the players... there are still choices. You can play along, parroting your role in the hope of hurrying the pathetic ordeal along... or you can dodge, deflect, retreat, angry at yourself for hiding, for failing to exact just retribution for the discomfort inflicted upon you... or you can alter the script.

You add little changes.

You experiment.

You subvert. You play. You feed the sense of power it gives you.

You become an artist.

"Ah... um... do you come here a lot?"

"No."

It wasn’t ego. It was fatigue.

"Errrr. Are you staying for a while?"

"No."

"Ahhm."

"So. Shall we go?"

"W-whuh?"

Seiji leaned his head lightly against his hand, forefinger to temple, thumb a wry frame to his face.

"Your place," he enunciated slowly, "or my car?"

The boy actually stopped to think about the answer.

"Uh... my place?"

And so it went, and so it goes, and so it will.

*

...Hence the snoring figure before him now.

He was more innocent than most, this one, more of an amateur.

Somehow that made it worse.

As this encounter was manifestly unplanned, Seiji had not brought his particular... arsenal. It was no great setback — many common household implements could be adapted to the task at hand.

Seiji gave the boy’s shoulder a casual push, nudging him awake.

*

All right, all right, it was more than a challenge. It was approaching vendetta.

Seiji wondered when exactly he had gone from annoyance to actively wishing these people ill.

The boy gave a sharp hiss of pain.

It was intriguing, to test them. Enticing, to push them, test their limits, to see how far they would allow him to go, how much they were willing to take. How long before their pride allowed them to call stop. And mean it.

Always a little bit farther than they thought. Just a little bit more. And then more.

The walls that men build are begun early, stone edifices of self-concept raised in response to the world’s expectations — the innermost self protected behind a fortress of pride, of strength, of invulnerability, emotionlessness, dominance, control. From childhood on they are built, and fortified as the years go by, and guarded with all their might, until the wall becomes the very foundation.

Seiji had the power to disarm those walls with a thought — to nullify simply by looking beyond, seeing all they hid from the world — to shake the foundations, leaving some deep, subliminal part of them cold, knowing they’d been found out.

Seiji was quite familiar with those walls — he’d built one himself.

*

Seiji slipped his belt back into its buckle, and straightened his seams.

People who had illicit liaisons with Seiji tended to be more hesitant to have illicit liaisons in the future. Left with a chilled feeling of exposure just beneath the surface of consciousness; physically sated and emotionally unsettled — rattled, as if they had just narrowly escaped dealing their souls away to Lucifer in a half-remembered dream... Like a dream... but dreams were never really under your control even if you thought they were — and yet you still had only yourself to blame.

He had seen the beginning of that realization in the boy’s eyes, for the briefest of moments before orgasm overtook him yet again. It was there in his eyes now, first fuzzy and then stark as he blinked, slow soreness in his movements. Lying in the middle of his stripped mattress, sheets and impromptu devices entangled on the floor at the foot of the bed. Wanting to order him out, but unable — yang undermined, wall breached, staring up at Seiji, hoping to god the blond bastard would just go home.

Looking up at him, all with their uncertain eyes, all the too-confident would-be seducers, wanting to use and having been used, finally understanding the message in his eyes — you want me, and I will make you sorry for it.

And that, of course, was the point of this whole empty exercise.

Seiji washed his hands meticulously in the bathroom sink and left.

*

The old heap had cooled down enough to make it home, at least. Seiji pulled into the driveway and switched off the car. Rain spattered the windshield, unimpeded by wipers, blurring the figure that sat crouched on the front steps.

There was something classically tragic about Ryo in the rain. It went against him, his element, contrary to the stuff of which he was made... More than damp, it dampered him, made him draw up inside himself, made him seem smaller than he really was. The shape of his skull was clearly visible under the drenched hair, standing up in wisps.

For want of a better cliché... it reminded Seiji of a wet kitten.

Somewhere deep inside, Seiji felt a twinge.

Water dripped from the ends of Ryo’s hair into his face, pasting it to his skin in smooth black rivulets, his clothing uniformly darkened, shiny with rain at the knees and elbows. Hunched down into his thin jacket, hands jammed into his pockets, he looked up when he heard the jeep door open.

Seiji clicked open his huge black umbrella and shut the door behind him.

They stared at one another, expressionless — eyes to eyes, stoic face to stoic face, and silence.

Ryo lowered his head, leaning his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped.

"Here long?" Seiji asked.

Ryo shrugged. "Couple hours."

"Where did you leave them this time?"

Ryo stared down at the ground between his feet. "Dunno," he mumbled. "My place, some store, back seat of your car, who gives a crap."

Ryo had a problem with keys.

Seiji raised an eyebrow in consideration, moving closer to the steps. The black umbrella shielded them both.

"Guy or girl?" Ryo still did not look up.

Seiji paused. "Does it matter?" he said.

"I guess not." Ryo’s hands tightened around each other.

A silence followed. Seiji took another step, offering Ryo his free hand.

Ryo exploded.

Wordlessly he leaped up, slapped the umbrella out of Seiji’s hand, twisting loose where Seiji made to grab his arm.

"You fucking son of a bitch!"

Seiji caught the second blow beneath his ribcage, driving him back a step. He lost the air in his lungs in a sharp exhale, barely dodging the punch aimed at his jaw.

Down to the wire, Ryo would win over Seiji most times, in theory. Not for any real superior ability; simply because he was a hair faster, because his nature was reflexive where Seiji was thoughtful, because where Seiji fought instinct, Ryo was not hesitant to let it take control.

But he was not the warrior now.

Instinct scattered, he had become all emotion — burdened by it, no skill, no direction — and fundamentally, emotion would not let him do Seiji real harm.

One final blow connected resoundingly with Seiji’s jaw, but this time Seiji caught his wrist, twisted, spinning Ryo’s back to him, pinning his arm behind.

Ryo stilled — completely. His eyes blazed one last time, then flickered and dimmed, and he let himself be pinned, collapsing against Seiji like a toy.

Seiji moved his jaw, testing gingerly. His tongue probed a spot inside his cheek where his teeth had cut in a little, a slight coppery taste. He released Ryo’s wrist. Ryo did not move.

"You’re angry," Seiji said. "It weakens you."

"Son of a... bitch," Ryo breathed. His head fell back against Seiji’s shoulder. Cold rain from his hair slid down his face, trickling into Seiji’s collar, warmed a little by Ryo’s skin.

Seiji slipped an arm beneath Ryo’s, holding him up, guiding him indoors, up the stairs.

*

Ryo left his shoes in the doorway when Seiji told him to, but after that he did not move. The fight had gone out of him. His eyes were dark, hollow. Not knowing how to react, how to provoke a reaction, he had simply stopped acting for now, shut himself down.

He stood still in the center of the small studio flat, water still dripping from the ends of his hair, hands limp at his sides. A small red circle marked one cheek, from the shoulder-button on Seiji’s raincoat.

The apartment was clean, spare, the small space uncluttered, the furnishings spartan. A clay hibachi for heat sat against one wall — another sat under the low table, partially draped over by an insulating kotatsu, a blanket for warming the legs while activity continued on the tabletop. Family-sized, but unused. Neat. Sparse. The flat looked hardly lived-in — less a home than a stopping-place, a depot. Both hibachi were extinguished. From a small black-wooden cabinet in the corner, Seiji pulled out a futon and spread it upon the floor.

Ryo was soaked through. He held his arms out a little, allowing Seiji to peel the sodden clothing off him, shivering slightly when the cool air hit his naked skin, staring down at the wet pile of jeans and shirt and jacket at his feet. He let Seiji push him gently to the futon, and sat still and unblinking while Seiji pulled a dark green comforter from the linen closet and wrapped it around him. His hand moved slightly to hold the blanket closed at his neck.

Seiji shed his own damp garments, took the combined pile and dumped it into the bath-room laundry, returning with two towels. He knelt down beside Ryo, tugged one end of the blanket from between Ryo’s tense fingers, got into the blanket behind him and wrapped it around the two of them, his legs on either side of Ryo’s bare body.

Carefully, he began to dry Ryo’s dripping hair.

Ryo clutched the ends of the blanket to his shoulders once more, his head lowered, rocking unresistingly back and forth under the firm rubbing of the towel. The bones of his spine stood out slightly at the back of his bent neck, a soft ripple under his skin, defenseless, despondent. Fine black hairs escaped the towel at his nape, lying smooth across the pale brown hollow there. A tremor of chill ran through him.

Seiji pulled Ryo against him, combing through the still-damp hair with his fingers. A clean, rainy-windy scent lingered in the tangled strands.

Very gradually Ryo’s skin warmed against Seiji’s, smooth back to Seiji’s chest, ribs still trembling between Seiji’s thighs.

Ryo looked curious from this odd upside-down angle, with the hair for once pulled back from his forehead, unguarded, exposed. His face seemed wider, younger, his eyes darker. He stared up at the ceiling numbly, his head on Seiji’s shoulder — a little less shivery now, his body less rigid, leaning on Seiji’s chest, arms resting on Seiji’s knees.

"Ryo."

"Yeah?" His voice was hoarse.

"Do you hate me sometimes?"

Slowly, Ryo’s eyes fell shut.

"No. I try. I can’t." He drew a breath that shook in his chest a little when he let it go, slowly. "I get angry at you. I’m angry at you now."

Seiji’s hand moved musingly through Ryo’s hair.

"What exactly do you want from me?" Simply a question, no challenge.

Ryo was silent for a while.

"I don’t know," he said, finally. He paused. "I never wanted anybody but you. Not once."

Seiji spun an ebony strand around his fingers.

"I wouldn’t stop you," he said.

He felt Ryo tense.

"Why the fuck not?!"

"Calm down," Seiji sighed.

"Why does that mean something to me and not you?" Ryo went on, unheeding. "Is something wrong with me?"

"Maybe," Seiji said after a moment.

Ryo scowled. "What’s so damn different about me?"

Seiji was thoughtful.

"You see sex as a sacred rite," he said, after a moment. "It’s not. More often than not it’s just two essential strangers doing acrobatics to get off. It isn’t holy and it isn’t mysterious — but you want to elevate it. You want waterfalls and thunderbolts and cosmic significance."

Ryo raised his head, sharply, dislodging Seiji’s hand.

"You want me to believe that you completely would not give a shit if I fucked around on you," he said.

"Yes," Seiji said. "Have fun, Ryo."

"Asshole —"

"Ryo," Seiji warned. "Calm down."

A plaintive note stole into Ryo’s voice. "Well what do you wanna go and say that to me for!?"

"Ryo."

"It’s all just... shit to you?" The words grated in Ryo’s throat, a strained, painful sound. "How can you want me to... to be with you, and then not give a damn what I do?"

Seiji paused, frowning.

"Should I put conditions on it, Ryo?" His tone was even, too-calm, a portent of growing ire. "Should I only concern myself with you if you keep your hands to yourself?" he said. "What does some random person have to do with me and you?"

Ryo’s head fell back again.

"People aren’t — you can’t have a random —" He shook his head. "You can have a random beer or a random movie or a burger or a random card game. When you start fucking it isn’t random anymore. When you hand yourself over like a goddamn dinner plate —" he ran out of breath.

There was a pause. Ryo’s chest rose and fell, heavily. When he spoke again his voice was a near-whisper.

"Forget it," he said. "Maybe it is just me."

"Maybe," Seiji said.

Another silence followed.

"Hmh." A syllable, a single short breath. Seiji stared at the ceiling, thoughtfully. "I’d always preferred to think of myself as at least an after-dinner mint."

Ryo sat up.

"Are you... joking?" He was incredulous.

"Maybe." Seiji paused. "It seemed appropriate." A cynical quirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. "As appropriate as anything else."

Ryo covered his eyes with his hand, shaking his head. His laugh sounded rather like a sob.

"I don’t get you and I’m never gonna," he said.

Seiji’s silence was agreement.

He reached out, drew Ryo back against him. There was an instant of resistance, then Ryo lay his head on Seiji’s shoulder once more.

A silence followed. Outside, the rain was beginning to abate, a muted tapping at the windows.

The hand moving in Ryo’s hair slowed, and slowed, then lay still.

"Dinner plate?"

Ryo stiffened, guiltily.

Seiji leaned his head back against the wall and smiled, mirthlessly. "That was remarkably cruel, Ryo. Am I that way to you with words?"

Ryo paused. "Yes," he said, and then hesitantly, "well... no. Sometimes?"

Typical Ryo — bald truth, then diplomacy, then a sort of middle ground — if he could ever figure out a way to eliminate steps A and B, he’d really be on to something.

Then again, he wouldn’t be Ryo anymore, would he.

Seiji shook his head, and his smile twisted, wryly.

Ryo turned his head a little, raised his eyes.

"You mad?" he whispered.

After a moment, Seiji shook his head again. "No," he said. "I’m impressed." He gazed at the ceiling.

Ryo looked up at him, sidewise. There was a pause.

"I don’t always tell the truth," Seiji said. "But you... you can’t lie." He stroked Ryo’s hair again, absently. "It gives weight to what you say. I don’t think you realize that."

Ryo looked down.

"I didn’t mean it," he whispered.

There was a longer silence. Seiji lay his forehead against the top of Ryo’s head.

"Don’t apologize for telling the truth, Ryo," he said, quietly. "Don’t ever be afraid to call a plate a fucking plate."

Slowly, Ryo turned within the loose circle of his arms.

"But... that’s what I mean, Seiji," he said. "You... it’s...it’s not. Why do you think it is? Why do you act like..." He shut his eyes. "If it made you happy, if it made you even a little bit happy, then maybe I could understand, maybe I would even shut up. But it doesn’t, it makes you angry, you go out there and you come back to me and you’re angry... so why would you even keep on —" he stopped.

"You," Seiji murmured, "want more than there is."

Ryo shook his head.

"I just... I want... I wanna be..."

"Say it," Seiji whispered.

...enough. Lips moved, throat worked, no sound.

Ryo put his forehead on Seiji’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut against the hot escaping tears.

"If you have to keep going..." He spoke through his teeth, strangling the words. "If you have to keep on going out there... then... then what the hell is keeping you here in the first place?"

Seiji closed his eyes. "You have no idea what you already have," he said, softly.

"Yes I do." Ryo lifted his head, his breath warm and soft in the hollow of Seiji’s throat. He turned on one knee and the ball of one foot, and his fingertips rubbed softly across the flat plane of Seiji’s abdomen, tracing around the slit of his navel; he whispered into Seiji’s throat, his lips brushing over the vulnerable pulse-beat there: "Yes I do."

His kiss was a soft tug on Seiji’s lower lip.

Seiji sighed, knowing what would follow — Ryo feeling possessive, Ryo reasserting property rights.

He shut his eyes, steadying himself for a barrage that never came.

Seiji blinked, confused.

There was violence in Ryo — there was fire and savagery and capacity that even he himself was not completely aware of. To take Ryo; that was one kind of overwhelming. To be taken by him was another kind.

But this... this was something else.

Ryo’s hands moved, softly, deliberate, down the small of Seiji’s back, over his hips, pressing down, and between, easing his thighs further apart. Ryo’s touch burned.

Gentle. Seiji didn’t want gentle

Realizing what Ryo was doing, he went cold — a line of ice down the center of the pillar of reluctant heat that his body was becoming, that Ryo’s hands were turning him into.

"You —"

His voice sounded weak to his own ears — viciously, he bit down on a moan before it could escape.

His seed stained Ryo’s hand the first time, and then Ryo’s fingers slid easily inside him, slow and careful while the other hand moved, kneading beneath the soft pit of his knee, lifting, parting.

Not this. God, not this... Seiji wanted the violence, the inferno, the haste and satisfaction — wanted to be engulfed and consumed by the fire that was so close to pain, wanted the deft torment of it to drive everything out: thought, memory, regret — wanted to shut his mind down and live in the physical, wanted it hard and fast and over and done.

Ryo wouldn’t give him that.

His mouth moved over Seiji’s skin, meticulous, burning, teeth and tongue rough and slow upon his chest, his throat, beneath his chin. Involuntarily Seiji swallowed, hard, throat rippling against the light pressure of Ryo’s lips, his breath hoarse, dry, quickening once more against his will.

Against his will — and so why was he accepting it? Bracing himself for it, knees wide with both hands flat on the floor behind him, pliant, arching, stretching, the muscles straining at the small of his back —

Ryo moved inside him now, filled him with the slow inevitable surety of a tide; Ryo held him in his arms, pressed his body to the wall, knees beneath and lifting his own, a sweet and urgent battery — Ryo drew it out, every instant, forced him to feel everything — Ryo wouldn’t let him not feel. Ryo wouldn’t let him be stone.

This was pain of another sort.

For an indomitable will to be thwarted — for a body and soul to be utterly invaded, filled, drowned — every surface inside and out coated, encased in silken, flowing lava — no room for will, or choice — all determination, all volition inundated, swept away — to be not coerced, but convinced —

It was the thing most unpardonable — to usurp his control.

...and it was good. God, it was good.

"You bastard." The whisper rasped in Seiji’s throat. "You bastard —" and Ryo’s lips closed over his again and there were no more words.

Ryo loved him, thoroughly, personally, tenderly, came as close as it was possible to come, and then even closer — the sweet, gentle pressure on his tongue perhaps the most intimate invasion of all.

Seiji felt a tremor go through Ryo, and then a deep hot rush inside, and then still. He shut his eyes and a moan escaped him — through clenched teeth the sound became a growl, a protest, a reproach.

Close now, the unbearable; gently, so that it would not hurt him, Ryo pulled back. Seiji shuddered, violently. The shaking did not stop when the pleasure subsided.

Ryo’s arms were close around him. His chest rose and fell, heavily, his head limp on Ryo’s shoulder, the salt-taste of Ryo’s skin still keen on his tongue.

A whisper came, a soft breath in his ear.

"You okay?"

Seiji put both hands to his chest and shoved him, hard. Ryo fell back upon the futon with a muffled thud.

Seiji rose, steadying himself against the wall with one hand. He walked away without a backward glance.

The tall glass doors seemed heavier than usual. His hands slipped a little as he pulled, sliding them open, and stalked out onto the balcony.

Clear, biting, the wind after the storm. He shivered, standing there. He couldn’t make it stop.

He stared down over the wooden balcony rail. The black umbrella still lay there in the yard, wind-dented and abandoned, rolling slowly from side to side. A tiny pool of rainwater had collected inside it, glittering darkly in the lamplight.

A moment later, Ryo emerged. He’d swathed a towel around his waist, and he carried the green blanket in both hands. Hesitantly, he came and stood next to Seiji; he lifted the blanket and draped it around Seiji’s bare shoulders.

Seiji’s body warred with his first instinct: to push blanket and Ryo away again. He held himself still, let Ryo wrap him in the heavy cloth. It slipped down from his shoulder on one side.

"Seiji?"

Seiji didn’t answer.

Ryo folded his arms on the balcony rail, stared down at the deserted street below, dark pavement shining slick and wet in the light of the moon and streetlamps. Strands of black hair blew into his eyes.

"Your eyes change color when you come," Ryo said, softly. A blush darkened his face. "They go all dark and then they, like... explode."

The breeze lifted Seiji’s hair away from his head, cold and exposed on the back of his scalp.

"I... I don’t know anything else like it." Ryo’s arm rested close to his on the railing, so close that Seiji could feel the warmth of it. "Like thirty different kinds of blue." Ryo stared at the ground. "Did you ever know that?"

"No. I never —" I never had a mirror at the time.

He started to say it, started to be sarcastic and flat and indifferent, to nullify the sentiment, to retreat behind the stone mask once more — but he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring himself to just coldly negate what Ryo had said, and what he had not said.

A chill played down his spine, despite the heavy cloth around his shoulders. The wind, he told himself. The wind.

Ryo looked up at him. "Nobody ever told you that?"

Seiji shivered.

"No," he said.

The cold wind ruffled Ryo’s hair, cowlicky, tousled, inky, soft. His eyes were wide and dark and sad. And beautiful.

"Seiji? I’m... I’m sorry."

An all-purpose phrase, an old refrain, familiar, melancholy, hurtful. But it was not Seiji’s own pain that hurt him now.

He wondered if Ryo even knew what he was apologizing for.

Slowly, Ryo held out his hand.

Seiji let himself be led back inside.

— end —

_______________________________________________  
Another one culled from excess Spirit and Flame files (and also much Mink brainstormage). Thanks Jink for the Japanese pub info and help on second edit... Adam for the bullwhip... Mink for... well, a lot! More in the near future, I hope. —T (9/17/00)


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